Lol it’s like you summoned the ancient spirit of not understanding incremental improvement, who then wrote a short essay to explain to you just how much they don’t understand the concept.

Wow, so it would be illegal for parents to sleep? Gtfo

This reminds me of that post about how to spot a kid on the Internet. Insane extreme takes and an inability to understand nuance.

10 years ago no car would automatically turn off if you left it running. It would only stop if it ran out of gas (which could be days). You want to charge a man with murder because he didn’t memorize the owner’s manual.

She wondered aloud what jail would be like. That triggered the arrest. The curious musings of a child, during an interrogation in the absence of her parents or a forensic child psychologist.

X lost half a billion dollars in the first quarter of 2023. Odd that the financial expert didn’t mention this even though it is literally in the same sentence as the “40% drop in revenue” statement in the article.

This article conveniently omits Israel-Palestine relations prior to and during periods of minimal US meddling. Let’s take a look at the prelude to the current conflict to get our bearings.

Obama made statements early on in his presidency about lasting peace in the Middle East. His first meeting with Netanyahu was a disaster, and so he dropped the issue for his entire term. 8 years of pretty much ignoring the Palestinians. Trump enters office and likewise makes public statements supporting lasting peace. His meetings with Netanyahu were a great success…for Israel specifically. The US changed policy to state that illegal Israeli settlements were legal, it recognized Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel with Israel as the sole owner of the city, and it began to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. All of this was a big kick in the pants to Palestine, who were never consulted for any of these policy changes.

Biden entered office and continued to push for normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but let’s be honest, he had a similar do-nothing attitude as Obama had when it comes to lasting peace.

Then Hamas attacks Israel. The US hadn’t engaged them for over a decade and Arab nations were starting to normalize relations with Israel with no regard for Palestine. It is hard to imagine what else Hamas could have done to get the attention of the US and Arab nations.

And that brings us to the present, where Israel’s retaliation has once again captured the attention of the US and Arab nations and put the needs of the Palestinians in the minds of their leaders.

In my opinion, if we had meddled more during peace time and engaged with Palestinians in the absence of conflict, then we could have avoided the current war altogether. The current conflict appears to be the result of the absence of US meddling, or at the very least an unwillingness to recognize the needs of Palestinians during times of relative peace.

They sell CBD oil with this little droppers for dosing, but when you read the studies the dosage is like a mouthful of oil. It’s like the exact opposite problem of melatonin dosing.

We are not in a recession. The problems with wage stagnation are not some temporary hiccup in the economy. It is a systemic problem. Stop conflating the two, complaining that a macroeconomic term with a very specific meaning isn’t defined the way you want it to be. Stop expecting the problem to heal itself if the fed lowers rates or taxes get nudged up or down or whatever. We know how to fix wage stagnation because we have done it before. Regulation. Labor protections. Minimum wage increases. Wage stagnation occurs in the absence of these things, and they can only be done by Congress.

I have a different interpretation of those close calls: we were very very lucky and should not rely on defiance as a mechanism to avoid the apocalypse.

I think where you are going wrong here is assuming that our internal perception is not also a hallucination by your definition. It absolutely is. But our minds are embodied, thus we are able check these hallucinations against some outside stimulus. Your gripe that current LLMs are unable to do that is really a criticism of the current implementations of AI, which are trained on some data, frozen, then restricted from further learning by design. Imagine if your mind was removed from all stimulus and then tested. That is what current LLMs are, and I doubt we could expect a human mind to behave much better in such a scenario. Just look at what happens to people cut off from social stimulus; their mental capacities degrade rapidly and that is just one type of stimulus.

Another problem with your analysis is that you expect the AI to do something that humans cannot do: cite sources without an external reference. Go ahead right now and from memory cite some source for something you know. Do not Google search, just remember where you got that knowledge. Now who is the one that cannot cite sources? The way we cite sources generally requires access to the source at that moment. Current LLMs do not have that by design. Once again, this is a gripe with implementation of a very new technology.

The main problem I have with so many of these “AI isn’t really able to…” arguments is that no one is offering a rigorous definition of knowledge, understanding, introspection, etc in a way that can be measured and tested. Further, we just assume that humans are able to do all these things without any tests to see if we can. Don’t even get me started on the free will vs illusory free will debate that remains unsettled after centuries. But the crux of many of these arguments is the assumption that humans can do it and are somehow uniquely able to do it. We had these same debates about levels of intelligence in animals long ago, and we found that there really isn’t any intelligent capability that is uniquely human.

So we should abandon diplomacy precisely when it is needed most? When we withdraw our support and Iran and Egypt join the conflict, will it be easier to stomach the killing of even more children in more nations? After we cede our influence in the middle east and China expands its influence to fill the vacuum, we will be able to honor our treaty with Taiwan after an emboldened China begins bombing and killing their children?

This is the macabre calculus of geopolitics. This is the risk of reactionary policy. All of this is a hypothetical worse case scenario, but one thing is certain: if we withdraw our support, Israel will lose any incentive to stop the killing. More will die. And that would be the best case scenario.

I am really disappointed with the discourse concerning Biden’s handling of the most recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Everyone is acting like Biden invented our alliance with Israel and is somehow personally responsible for our support of Israel. Geopolitical alliances are complicated matters that touch everything from international reputation to national security. They are fostered over decades. We have obligations to Israel that precede Biden and the recent conflict.

I understand the moral positions people are taking, and I agree that a genocide is taking place. But with anything geopolitical, these issues must be approached without hard lines and moral absolutism, because those ideals are what both sides are using to justify the atrocities we are witnessing. They both feel morally justified, and that the other side has crossed some hard lines. That is how diplomacy breaks down.

Those of you that want to see an end to the conflict need to understand that the official US position at this moment is aligned with you. But so many of you are proposing “simple” solutions that will not achieve that outcome. If we end support for Israel, they will not stop the genocide. What we will lose is leverage in negotiating peace and we will weaken the alliance with Israel, and the genocide will continue unhindered by US calls for restraint. You may argue that Israel relies on this alliance for security, and that is true, but you assume that other super powers would not jump at the chance to replace the US as a close ally to a nuclear power in the middle east.

Let’s not forget how rash reactionary approaches to geopolitics threatened the NATO alliance during the Trump presidency. Our allies are already doubting if the US will honor the treaty, and this doubt extends to Taiwan, too. Weakening these alliances gives power to our enemies, full stop. Do you want to see war break out in the Pacific? Russia to expand its empire eastward? The Israel-Palestine conflict to extend to other Arab nations? Damaging these alliances will cause more war, not less.

Outrage against Israel is justified. But look past your nose before you jeopardize our key alliances. Diplomacy is slow and frustrating, but it is better than more war.

What AI companies are in the S&P500?

The government does a shitty job, but it is representative. American culture is dominated by billionaire worship, consumerism, and greed. We shouldn’t be so surprised when our elected officials share our values.